The common two-wheel hand truck is used extensively to handle heavy, rigid, box-like loads, especially on a one man job. The body of such a truck consists of a pair of upright rails which are spaced apart by cross bars which are tipped to hold a load at their front faces. A lip stands out from the bottom edge of the front faces of the rails to reach underneath a load to pick it up and to place it upon the rails when the truck is tipped. Two spaced apart wheels are mounted upon a shaft at the back side of the rails and at the bottom of the truck so that when the truck is tilted, it will be upon these wheels. Finally, a handle is provided at the top and at the back side of each rail to enable an operator to hold the truck. In picking up a load, the operator pushes the truck against the side of the box-like load and pushes the lip underneath it. He then tips the truck and the load rearwardly to place the load upon the truck. So positioned, an operator can balance the load over the wheels and move the loaded truck to its destination. Such hand trucks are useful for moving loads across smooth level surfaces but do not help the operator to lift or lower a load from the bed of a pickup truck. Because of this problem, a job such as moving a stove or refrigerator necessitates the use of two or more people to lift or lower the load onto a typical flat bed truck. This need also arises for package handlers such as U.P.S. drivers who have to handle extra heavy boxes from time to time and cannot single-handedly manage to lift or lower a box-like package from the ground to the truck bed. An attempt to solve this problem is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,896,904 by Bruce Walker. However, there is a serious problem with Walker's design. Walker describes a two wheeled hand truck in which a pair of legs is cranked down, in a telescoping fashion, from hollow openings formed by tubular vertical members at either side of the back of the hand truck. The proposed mechanism does indeed raise a load from ground level to the height of a truck bed. However, once the load is lifted the user must attempt to lift and lower the hand truck and its contents onto the truck bed. Lowering the legs while the Walker hand truck is fully loaded could also prove problematical. The legs must be extended while the user holds onto the handles of the hand truck, creating a rather precarious situation. Needless to say, this product never made it to the marketplace.
Other patent attempts have been made but still fail to solve the above problems. See for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,493,824 to Noros; 2,714,462 to Butler, 2,904,201 to Rhodes; 3,052,323 to Hopfeld; 3,199,692 to Lebre; 3,873,118 to Takagi; 4,049,083 to Garvey; 4,728,245 to Shelton; 4,737,065 to Ju; 5,195,762 to Pressly; 5,290,051 to Olson and 5,419,672 to Poe.